August 11, 2008
01:00 AM (EDT)

News Release Number: STScI-2008-31

August 11, 2008: In commemoration of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit
in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science
Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimedREAD: Junior version of this articleLearn about this story in the Star Witness, a science newspaper available on our sister site, Amazing Space. Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of
celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star
cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps
triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near
the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of
galaxies. This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble's
Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from
glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.